


Weight of Living

by katlynwtf



Series: GenRai Week 2017 [4]
Category: Naruto, Naruto Shippuden
Genre: Day Four: Bodyguard, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, GenRai Week 2017, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-13 22:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11769933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katlynwtf/pseuds/katlynwtf
Summary: Genma knew it was selfish of him, relying on Raido to hold him together when the older boy was hurting just as much as he was, but he also couldn’t help but think that maybe he was holding Raido together, too. That was what they did, after all - they held each other up when everything was falling apart.





	Weight of Living

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I won't be posting my late ass GenRai Week stuff in December after all? XD
> 
> GenRai Week is over but here's my contribution for GenRai Week 2017, Day Four: Bodyguard!
> 
> This is set when Genma and Raido find out the Fourth Hokage died. Genma's ~16, Raido's ~18.

Seven days had passed since they’d gotten the news, and Genma still couldn’t wrap his head around it. Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, the man he’d pledged to serve and protect at all costs, was gone.  
  
It didn’t make sense - none of it made sense. Minato was one of the strongest shinobi Genma had ever met; brave, fearless, willing to kill and die for his people. He was the epitome of a true leader, and Genma had looked up to him, admired him, wanted to be just like him... but he had failed him.

He was one of the Hokage’s Guard Platoon. He was supposed to protect him, but Minato had died on his watch.

Minato’s son had been orphaned on his watch.

He didn’t think he could ever forgive himself for that.

Even for his age, Genma was a seasoned shinobi, had seen and done things that no normal sixteen year old could ever even _begin_ to imagine, had taken life and mourned life... He knew that death was inevitable, especially in his line of work, but nothing could have prepared him for the pain of this loss. A loss that he had been selected and trained to prevent.

Overwhelmed by grief and guilt and shame, his only solace was the presence of his best friend. He and Raido had known each other since they were children, had practically grown up together - his parents weren’t around much, both busy with their duties as shinobi, so more often than not Raido found himself at Genma’s, so often that he eventually began calling Genma’s mother ‘mom’. They may not have been blood, but they were family, and they looked out for each other.

Now was no different.

He knew it was selfish of him, relying on Raido to hold him together when the older boy was hurting just as much as he was, but he also couldn’t help but think that maybe he was holding Raido together, too. That was what they did, after all - they held each other up when everything was falling apart, like they had when Raido’s father died. Like they had during the war.

When Genma was shattered, Raido was the glue that held his broken pieces in place, the warmth that seeped through the cracks and made him feel like everything might be all right.

But some things were too painful, some scars ran too deep.

And the weight of this failure was too heavy for either of them to carry.

\---

Seven years had passed, and Genma still felt the loss of the Fourth Hokage every day. The guilt he had carried around with him since that day had only festered, magnified by the sight of Minato’s son, isolated and ignored, but it also fueled him - never again would he allow someone he was charged to protect die on his watch.

He had turned his grief into another tool in his arsenal, as dangerous a weapon as the senbon he kept in his mouth. He honed its edges and learned to wield it, and in time, it went from an agonizing weakness to a strength that kept him fighting.

The loss of Minato had taken so much from him, but it had given him something, too - it had given him a spine of steel, a resolve as unbreakable as the foundations of Konoha.

It shaped him into the shinobi he was meant to be. The shinobi that Minato had seen in him all those years ago when the Hokage had asked him to be one of his guards.

The effects of losing Minato hadn’t been lost on Raido, either. The carefree youth that Genma had spent his childhood with had grown up, in more ways than one. He had always been serious, reserved, but his smile had come easily, even during and after they had endured the horrors of war. Now his smile was a rare gesture, one that Genma missed.

He wondered, not for the first time, if they would ever get past this.

\---

Not once in the last seventeen years had Genma ever thought that one day, he might find closure for the failures of his past. He had learned to live with his guilt, to push it down and pretend that it wasn’t eating away at him every single day, but the sight of the Fourth Hokage on the battlefield once more brought all of it back to the surface.

In the midst of battle, there was no time to approach Minato, and even if there were, what would he say? What could he possibly say that could ever make up for his failure to protect him, his failure to protect his son?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

In the end, though, he didn’t need to. He ran past Minato in pursuit of an enemy, followed by a voice so soft he wasn’t even sure that it was real. _I’m proud of you._

Even later, when the battle had ended, trekking through the corpses still littering the field in search of survivors with Raido at his side, those words echoed in his head on a loop. _I’m proud of you_. They were words that he had never thought he would hear.

They were words that meant everything.

Without thinking about it, his hand found Raido’s, the warmth of it as comforting now as it had been seventeen years ago on the day of Minato’s funeral.

And for the first time in a long time, he felt at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Naruto and all recognizable characters belong to Kishimoto. Title is from a Bastille song of the same name.
> 
> I live for comments and constructive feedback :D


End file.
